For most of the last decade, "faster payments" was something banks talked about at conferences while merchants kept waiting two to three business days for funds to arrive. That era is over. The United States now runs two live, instant payment systems — The Clearing House's RTP Network and the Federal Reserve's FedNow Service — and both are processing real money at a scale that makes them worth paying attention to.

Together, they processed more than $2 trillion in payments during 2025.^[1,2] More than 2,700 banks and credit unions now participate across the two networks.^[3,4] For comparison, ACH — the standard electronic payment rail that IntelliPay currently uses — processed $42.5 trillion in commercial transactions in 2024.^[9] Real-time payments are still a small piece of the total. But the growth rate is striking, and businesses that understand these systems now will be better positioned when adoption reaches their corner of the market.

Two Networks, One Job

Think of RTP and FedNow the way you think of Visa and Mastercard. Two separate networks. Different ownership. But they do essentially the same thing: move money from one bank account to another, instantly, at any time of day or night. The key difference is who built them and which banks have signed up.

The RTP Network

RTP was built by The Clearing House, a private company owned by the largest U.S. banks. It launched in November 2017 and was the first new payment system built in the United States in more than 40 years.^[5] The way it works is straightforward: your bank sends the payment to the other person's bank, the other bank confirms it, and the money is available in seconds. No overnight batch runs. No waiting for business hours. In February 2025, RTP raised its per-payment limit from $1 million to $10 million, which opened the door to large business-to-business payments that were previously handled by wire transfers.^[6] As of January 2026, 1,135 banks and credit unions had joined the network.^[4]

FedNow

FedNow is the Federal Reserve's version of the same concept. It launched in July 2023 and runs through the Fed's existing connections to more than 9,000 U.S. financial institutions.^[7] One practical advantage FedNow has over RTP is that banks do not need to set aside a special pool of money in advance to fund transactions. That requirement under RTP adds cost and complexity that makes it harder for smaller banks and credit unions to participate. Because FedNow skips that requirement, it has been easier for smaller institutions to sign up.^[8] By early 2026, more than 1,600 institutions had enrolled, adding 500 during 2025 alone.^[3] FedNow also raised its per-payment limit to $10 million in November 2025.^[6]

Both networks run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including weekends and federal holidays. Both use a modern data format called ISO 20022, which lets more information travel with each payment — things like invoice numbers, account references, and payment notes — rather than just the dollar amount. And both share the most important property: once a payment goes through, it is done. It cannot be taken back.

What the Numbers Actually Show

A lot of payments marketing throws around big projections without grounding them in current data. Here are the actual numbers from primary sources.

That jump in FedNow's average payment size — from $25,376 in 2024 to $101,435 in 2025 — tells an important story.^[2] When FedNow launched, most of the payments on it were small person-to-person transfers. The average is growing because businesses are starting to use it for larger payments. That is where the practical value for merchants, government agencies, and utilities starts to become real.

For longer-term context: market research firm GlobalData, as reported by eMarketer, projects that real-time payment volume in the U.S. will grow by about 32% per year through 2028.^[11] And 43% of U.S. banks reported actively investing in real-time payment capabilities in 2025, according to American Banker research.^[10] The direction is clear.

What Changes for Your Business

Most businesses today settle card payments in one to two business days. ACH takes longer. Checks can take a week. Real-time payments make all of that wait time disappear. Here is where that actually makes a difference.

You Get Paid Faster

For businesses with tight margins or high sales volume, getting paid Friday evening instead of Tuesday morning is not a small thing. Getting paid faster means you can pay your own bills faster, keep less cash sitting idle, and run a leaner operation. Payment timing is one of the most overlooked levers in managing a business's cash. Real-time rails put that control in your hands.

Pay Vendors and Contractors on Your Schedule

If you pay contractors, gig workers, or time-sensitive vendors, instant payments let you send money at exactly the right moment rather than batching everything for a weekday ACH run. For property managers, nonprofits sending emergency funds, or healthcare organizations paying contracted staff, that control matters both operationally and for the relationships themselves.

Faster Refunds

Customers notice how fast they get refunds. Instant refunds are now possible with real-time rails, and expectations have shifted since peer-to-peer apps normalized same-day money movement. The same logic applies to insurance claims, utility deposit returns, and government benefit payments. Making people wait days when the technology for instant delivery exists is hard to justify.

Less Manual Work for Your Accounting Team

Because RTP and FedNow use the ISO 20022 data format, each payment carries more built-in detail than a standard ACH or wire transfer. Invoice numbers, customer references, and payment notes travel with the money automatically. Your accounting team spends less time manually matching payments to invoices, and your records are cleaner from the start. For organizations that process high volumes of payments — like utility billing departments — that adds up quickly.

The No-Reversal Rule You Need to Understand

Here is the part most payment industry articles skip. When a payment goes out on RTP or FedNow, it is gone. You cannot reverse it. This is the most important operational difference between these networks and ACH.

With ACH, if your business sends a payment by mistake, sends it to the wrong account, or suspects fraud, there is a window of time during which you can request it back. NACHA's rules build that return process into how ACH works.^[12] With RTP and FedNow, that window does not exist. If a payment goes to the wrong place, getting it back requires the receiving bank to voluntarily send it back. That is not guaranteed, and it is not fast.

This is not a reason to avoid real-time payments. It is a reason to build the right controls before you start using them. Specifically:

• Verify account details before sending, not after. Confirm that the account number and routing number actually belong to the person you intend to pay. Catching an error after the money moves is very difficult.
• Train staff that reversals are not an option. The habit of "we'll fix it with a reversal" works on card payments and standard ACH. It does not work here. Everyone who touches outbound payments needs to understand that.
• Add an approval step for large payments. Requiring a second person to approve payments over a certain amount is a simple safeguard that significantly reduces the risk of fraud or costly mistakes.
• Update your fraud monitoring tools. Many fraud detection systems were built around catching suspicious behavior in human payment patterns. Instant payments move differently and may not trigger the same flags. Talk to your payment processor about whether your current tools are calibrated for this.

NACHA's 2026 updates to ACH operating rules address fraud prevention for businesses that send ACH payments, and the same logic applies here.^[12] The payment industry is moving toward catching problems before the money moves, not chasing them afterward. Real-time rails make that shift necessary, not optional.

Government and Utility Organizations: What to Plan For

For IntelliPay's government and utility clients, who currently process payments through ACH, real-time rails open up practical use cases worth planning for. The technology is available now, even if direct access through IntelliPay is not yet offered.

The most compelling near-term possibilities include:

• Sending tax refunds and rebate payments instantly, eliminating check processing costs and the wait that residents experience today
• Confirming utility payments at the moment they are made, which reduces disputes about whether a payment was received before a disconnection deadline
• Collecting fines and fees in the field through code enforcement, parking, and permitting agencies, with the payment confirmed before the officer leaves
• Sending emergency relief and disaster assistance payments the same day they are approved
• Paying small vendors and contractors the day the work is done, which reduces the cash flow burden on businesses that rely on government contracts

The policy environment is moving in this direction. A 2025 White House executive order directs federal agencies to move fully to electronic payments, and real-time rails fit that goal directly.^[13] State and local agencies are watching federal implementation closely as a model for their own systems.

FedNow vs. RTP: Side-by-Side

What IntelliPay Offers Today — and Where We Are Headed

IntelliPay is a PCI DSS Level 1-certified payment processor. We specialize in ACH and card-based payments for government agencies, utilities, healthcare organizations, insurance companies, and businesses. Our platform handles in-person, online, mobile, and recurring payments from a single system. We do not currently offer RTP or FedNow payment processing.

What we are doing right now: closely tracking both networks, working with our banking partners to understand integration timelines, and helping clients think through readiness so that when the option becomes available, the decision is informed. If you want to talk through your current payment setup — particularly around ACH, disbursement timing, or reducing manual reconciliation work — those are conversations we can have with you today. Reach out here.

What to Do Right Now

You do not need to overhaul your payment setup to start preparing. The practical steps are simpler than most vendors will tell you.

• Call your bank and ask specifically what they support. Ask whether your business account is live on RTP, FedNow, or both. Ask whether you can send payments, receive them, or both. Many large banks are fully live. Most community banks are in the process of joining FedNow. Capability varies by account type, and this one phone call tells you everything. The FedNow participant list and RTP participant list are publicly searchable if you want to check before calling.
• Decide which payment flows would actually benefit from being instant. One-time payouts, emergency payments, refunds, and field collections are where real-time settlement creates the clearest value. Recurring billing, payroll, and large batch runs are usually better left on ACH where lower cost and the ability to reverse mistakes are both advantages. See our payment model overview for help thinking through the tradeoffs.
• Update your fraud controls before you turn anything on. The permanent nature of real-time payments means problems are harder to fix after the fact. Account verification before sending, a second approval for large amounts, and payment limits are the basics. Put these in place before activating real-time payments, not the week after your first problem.
• Look for quick wins in your current ACH setup first. If your current ACH process has payment matching issues, slow reconciliation, or timing problems, fixing those now delivers immediate value and makes any future addition of real-time rails cleaner. Talk to IntelliPay about a payment setup review.
• For government and utility clients, start the banking conversation early. Adding real-time rails to a government or utility payment operation involves policy decisions, banking relationship changes, and system integration work. Starting that conversation now, before you need it, means a planned transition rather than a reactive scramble when the pressure arrives.

Real-time payments are not a future technology. They are running now, processing trillions of dollars a year. For most businesses, the move to instant rails is a matter of timing. The organizations that do the preparation now will find the transition straightforward. Those that wait will find themselves catching up.

Frequently Asked Questions